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Evan Bayh said he is retiring because partisanship has made governing too difficult, but I think there is another reason for his melancholic disengagement: our nation's short-term and long-term fiscal predicament has become too difficult. Government isn't fun anymore, now that we've already spent all there is to spend, plus all there is to borrow. No new entitlements because the old ones consume too much. No new taxes because the old ones are already high enough to slow the economic growth needed to pay what we already owe. No new social solutions because it requires first saying no to someone before we can say yes to someone else. When governing can no longer be about spending more, even centrist Democrats retire.

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